More About the Sutro

Track bike with Alfine, bullhorns, and a barcon shifter

Mission Bicycle didn’t invent the 8-speed hub or the first frame with internally routed cables and there’s nothing new about track geometry. The big news about the Sutro is that Mission combined these elements in a way that hasn’t been done before. If the Sutro was a production bike, maybe in two colors and three sizes (small, medium, large) – it would be pretty impressive. It weighs 24 pounds.

But this is a custom bike and each one is designed by the customer. Mission builds the wheels by hand, the frame comes in five sizes and they have each frame painted to order, one at a time, in one of 200 colors. More photos lightboxed on G+.

As we learned with our Drop-Bar Nexus project, the shifters are always an issue with internal gears on road bikes. Mission found a solution they swear works and it’s at the end of a bullhorn. They’re probably the only operation in the world that’s building bikes with both bullhorns and internally geared hubs. I’ll discover how well this bike works on Saturday when I arrive in Austin for SXSW. I’m riding this bike in our Mobile Social.

Mission will announce the pricing and availability soon. Expect frames for under $500.00 and a complete bike above $1,000.00.